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The UK’s first-ever direct air capture plant has been turned on to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into jet fuel.
The machine, developed by Mission Zero Technologies in partnership with the University of Sheffield, will run on solar power to recover 50 tonnes of CO2 from the air per year and turn it into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).
Sky News was given exclusive access to the new plant and spoke with Nick Chadwick, Mission Zero Technologies CEO, who explained that the machine is able to “hoover vast volumes of air, separate selectively the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, and then reject the atmosphere back to where it came from without the CO2 in it”.
There has been a lot of excitement about direct air capture recently – with companies like Alphabet and JPMorgan Chase investing significantly in it.
But some say it’s not a very efficient way of removing greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.
Dr Steve Smith, executive director of Oxford Net Zero, noted how these projects are “really small and really expensive”, adding that there are more energy-efficient alternatives to cut down greenhouse emissions such as switching to renewables.
However, he added that scaling different technologies like direct air capture could help us get close to our climate targets.
The Sustainable Aviation Fuel testing equipment
The scientists at Oxford Net Zero aren’t just sucking carbon down from the atmosphere, but also using that carbon to make sustainable jet fuel.
Aviation accounts for about 2% of the world’s emissions…
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